How did you decide one day to start up your own business in your twenties?
My drive really comes from my intuition. If it feels good and I enjoy doing it why not go for it? I started pretty early, back in 2016, when I began to post menswear on Instagram. I just really liked sharing this kind of content and eventually I started my own brand TAWO with a companion of mine. We noticed there was a lack of nice silver jewellery for men on the market and we saw that gap as an opportunity to start our own brand. When in 2020 the pandemic hit, as a lot of people, I discovered a new passion. Actually, I rekindled my passion for baking. At an early age I was absolutely certain I was going to be a baker but as many dreams, it was put on a back burner for a while since I was committed to my study of Economics. I think a coincidental coming together of all these events and experiences let me hatch out the idea of opening up my own bakery and building out a strong brand around it.
How do you manage to juggle these 3 projects mentally?
It is quite busy since I’m working on video and photo content for my own social media on a daily base, next to that I work fulltime for ‘Have a roll’ and then I also have to make sure TAWO is moving forward. ‘Have a roll’ does take up most of my time lately, since it’s expanding quickly. We opened a pop-up shop in a second location in Belgium (Ghent) during the summer, so that was an extra busy period. I like to call myself an organized chaos: icy calm on the outside but very chaotic on the inside. There are moments where I feel like I won’t make it but int he end it always -somehow- works out. I did realize that it’s impossible to focus on all of these project at once, so I decided to open the store only from Wednesday to Saturday. Time management is key to keep your head above water.
